Unfortunately, due to licensing restrictions we are not yet available in your country. We understand that you are currently in United States (your IP address 24.102.136.91). If you believe we have made a mistake, we apologize and ask that you please contact us at support@spotify.com.

Sounds like the BBC. It's a pain to get the World Service on the iPhone._________________--Howard
my music and other stuff

Yeah, I think Spotify (as it works on a PC) is pretty brilliant - for starters it brings at least 50% of my record collection online for €10 a month. The risk is that I will become dependent on it and then the subscription fee will rise rapidly, but that's not a problem here and now.

One problem with Spotify is that the revenue for small actors is very small (Spotify is owned by a couple of the major music labels) - this may lead to a worse service in the future as artists start to withdraw their music (already happened here in Sweden). The dream is to have a service like this were artists from all levels could put up their music and be payed equally per streamed song. This shouldn't really be a problem for anyone - Madonna will still be streamed a gazillion times more often than Antimon.

Get the people used to not 'owning' their own music, but streaming from central databases and you're halfway there to getting the public to accept harsh Digital Rights Management policies.

Don't you think this is a tad on the paranoid "oh dearism" side? I mean, people have been averting copyright long before the internet was born. "Home taping is killing music", which was printed on almost every LP sleeve? Did it kill music? No. Not at all. If anything, it just made music more vibrant, because we all then wanted to go out and form a band. I used to tape by holding my cassette recorder next to the TV speakers! As for DRM, have you not heard of Wire Tap Pro, or Audio Hijack Pro? (sorry I'm a Mac user). Same thing?

Get the people used to not 'owning' their own music, but streaming from central databases and you're halfway there to getting the public to accept harsh Digital Rights Management policies.

Don't you think this is a tad on the paranoid "oh dearism" side? I mean, people have been averting copyright long before the internet was born. "Home taping is killing music", which was printed on almost every LP sleeve? Did it kill music? No. Not at all. If anything, it just made music more vibrant, because we all then wanted to go out and form a band. I used to tape by holding my cassette recorder next to the TV speakers! As for DRM, have you not heard of Wire Tap Pro, or Audio Hijack Pro? (sorry I'm a Mac user). Same thing?

It´s still a good point.

The important concept here is

thundarr wrote:

Get the people used to not 'owning' their own music, but streaming from central databases

The RIAA bit I find of less importance here though.

We do however already know that the long tail effect from owning a huge catalog of music hasn´t quite performed as expected.. at least for download and on-demand services.. even though Wired Magazine would want you to think otherwise. In order to sell your product you will need to promote it and paradoxically that might be the reason the major labels are collapsing. They simply stopped doing what they were supposed to do and .. well.. it is hard to say what they really think they are doing these days. _________________A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"

Don't you think this is a tad on the paranoid "oh dearism" side? I mean, people have been averting copyright long before the internet was born. "Home taping is killing music", which was printed on almost every LP sleeve? Did it kill music? No. Not at all. If anything, it just made music more vibrant, because we all then wanted to go out and form a band. I used to tape by holding my cassette recorder next to the TV speakers! As for DRM, have you not heard of Wire Tap Pro, or Audio Hijack Pro? (sorry I'm a Mac user). Same thing?

Naturally we are currently able to circumvent any DRM. It's not the 'home taping' (ie filesharing) that is the problem here (I am a big fan of free filesharing), on the contrary, it is the recording industry.

We do however already know that the long tail effect from owning a huge catalog of music hasn´t quite performed as expected.. at least for download and on-demand services.. even though Wired Magazine would want you to think otherwise. In order to sell your product you will need to promote it and paradoxically that might be the reason the major labels are collapsing. They simply stopped doing what they were supposed to do and .. well.. it is hard to say what they really think they are doing these days.

Flailing around trying to grab anything they can as they sink, it appears, similar to the news companies trying to stop free news. They are having trouble adapting to the internet, and resorting to braver and braver schemes.

I'd like to defend Spotify a bit more by claiming that it is closer to listening to music radio than buying CDs. You don't buy specific music, you subscribe to (or agree to suffer through commercials for) the right to listen to their huge catalogue of music, with no track restrictions like on e.g. last.fm. There is no real sense of owning music on Spotify.

What about Pandora? If you want to listen to music, on the internet, that's a nice service. Free too.

If you want to listen to your music collection on your iPhone while away from home, I suggest ORB. It works great. The only problem is you have to leave your PC on, but that's not much of a problem._________________--Howard
my music and other stuff

What about Pandora? If you want to listen to music, on the internet, that's a nice service. Free too.

If you want to listen to your music collection on your iPhone while away from home, I suggest ORB. It works great. The only problem is you have to leave your PC on, but that's not much of a problem.

Hmm, when I said Spotify is a bit like radio I didn't mean that actually was like radio. I checked those sites briefly, and my guess is that you can't say "I want to listen to the full Steve Recih Works album" and do it on e.g. XM - I might be wrong since I only did a quick check. You can do that on Spotify.

What makes me think it is a bit like radio is the subscription concept, where you can listen to any album you want that they have (which isn't totally everything - I wanted to use a Pink Floyd album as an example but they're not on Spotify it seems) as long as you pay $10 a month. There's no real difference towards listening on a physical CD, except the way the music is owned. The difference in attitude that I feel towards these two things is interesting.

I must say that I have to agree with most of what Stefan is saying here. And although I was once quite pro(free)-file sharing, I now have quite a different opinion on this, which has largely come from those who still insist in getting stuff for nothing- which I now think is wrong.

I'd love Spotify to replace my record and CD collection, as it would really free up much needed space.

PS listening to Conrad Schnitzler's track "Solar Cells" right now (off Spotify). Oddly enough, this track is from a Tangerine Dream compilation called "Tangerine Ambience", where all the other tracks- covers by TD fans I should say- are simply terrible. BUT, and this is a big but, the CS track is simply out of this world! The best on the whole LP. Apple iTunes would never allowed me to listen to the whole of this track- I can find it on iTunes, but because this is the longest track on the compilation, I can't purchase the single track without paying £8 or so (and therefore be able to listen to the whole of this track), and having all the rest of the tracks. Annoying._________________ACHTUNG!
ALLES TURISTEN UND NONTEKNISCHEN LOOKENPEEPERS!
DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN! ODERWISE IST EASY TO SCHNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK, BLOWENFUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT SPITZENSPARKSEN.
IST NICHT FÜR GEWERKEN BEI DUMMKOPFEN. DER RUBBERNECKEN SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS COTTONPICKEN HÄNDER IN DAS POCKETS MUSS.
ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN.

When you replace your collection with Spotify, and the company goes under... Have fun finding all those rare gems again

Yeah well, I imagine that can be fun. Finding hometaping sources... keeping the music alive in my head... picking out the chords on a guitar and singing it with my friends... It's just like with radio!

I'm a happy chappy really I'm just particularly passionate about music being free

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on cheap labour too.

We, in the west, have this ridiculous romantic notion that it is okay to dowload for free but will throw our arms in the air whenever we hear that a pair of shoes has been made in an Indonesian sweatshop and will bend over backwards to buy clothes and food (Tradecraft? ) that doesn't exploit workers, but we are quite happy to download music, software or video for nothing (and therefore exploiting those who have spent months, even years creating it)! What gives??

You really think music should be free? Why is that? Why shouldn't you have to pay for it? Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother (Neu!) were former members of Kraftwerk, however if they had the money behind them (both Ralf and Florian were pretty well off, both coming from well established rich backgrounds- Florian's Father, for starters, was a very famous German architect). Do you not think that if Neu! were in a similar position (I'm sure they weren't 'poor' though? The majority of "free thinkers" that I have met over the last 30 years or so, have rich parents), they may have done better?

What I am getting at is if all music is "for free" then the only people able to create and publish music, or at least music that may have a better chance of their music being marketed well, are those musicians who are relatively well off in the first place. Right?

The magic music of Germany happened because there was a massive injection of cash into Germany after the second world war. Money donated to Germany by America via the UN. Many german bands were also sponsored by companies such as Farfisa (observe and you will notice that there is a Farfisa Piano or organ belonging to almost every Kraut band- even Tangerine Dream used to thank their equipment sponsors on their covers today), keen to 'cash in'. But that money has long dried up, and now, in order to make music on a full-time basis you need money behind you, otherwise you will have to work full-time to keep the bills in check.

in order to make music on a full-time basis you need money behind you, otherwise you will have to work full-time to keep the bills in check.

Yep, sums it up for me. I have made a lot of music over the years. It is all readily available to download for free, either from websites I have set up myself, or on various filesharing networks. I work a shit full-time job to fund this music. I am happy to separate music from money as much as is possible.

Regardless of the amount of money coming in, music will still be created; music made without regard for compensation or monetary value, for the sake of music. The question should be 'What sort of music do we love to play?', not 'What sort of music sells well?' as it so often appears to be.

in order to make music on a full-time basis you need money behind you, otherwise you will have to work full-time to keep the bills in check.

Yep, sums it up for me. I have made a lot of music over the years. It is all readily available to download for free, either from websites I have set up myself, or on various filesharing networks. I work a shit full-time job to fund this music. I am happy to separate music from money as much as is possible.

Respect and applause for that! I wonder though how much nice music has been strangled at birth because the artist couldn't gather the energy for making it, how many wild geniuses have died in parks, homeless because their total dedication to their art without a chance to make a living out of it. Could be argued that this is the traditional (=correct and righteous?) way for artists.

thundarr wrote:

Regardless of the amount of money coming in, music will still be created; music made without regard for compensation or monetary value, for the sake of music. The question should be 'What sort of music do we love to play?', not 'What sort of music sells well?' as it so often appears to be.

I rarely partake in discussions about music marketing or economics, and I don't think I see that much of it here. I see it on swedish music forums, but I blame that on our collective psyche - we're brilliant at engineering and marketing, but culturally here is a wasteland.

Yep, sums it up for me. I have made a lot of music over the years. It is all readily available to download for free, either from websites I have set up myself, or on various filesharing networks. I work a shit full-time job to fund this music. I am happy to separate music from money as much as is possible.

Regardless of the amount of money coming in, music will still be created; music made without regard for compensation or monetary value, for the sake of music. The question should be 'What sort of music do we love to play?', not 'What sort of music sells well?' as it so often appears to be.

Nicely put, but you still need to respect the wishes of those who don't want you to 'take' money for free- by downloading, and that's why I think Spotify is a good cause- if it works.

So why we are on the subject of free downloads, here's a gift from me to all folk here at electro-music.com (I know some here have already heard this track).

This track is called "The Voice of Energy" (yep- Kraftwerk check here ). The track was originally released as a very limited edition 7" single on Static Caravan records (http://www.staticcaravan.org/) about 8 years ago. Almost all the sounds on this track were created from shortware radio bleeps and drones, and manipulated further using an Emu e6400 sampler. The crazy feedback at the beginning came from jamming extracts between myself and my best friend Richard Carman who currently lives in Japan, and recorded under the name of "Magic City" (Homage of course, to Sun Ra). The voice was a unknown shortwave radio broadcast- but my guess was that it was from the Quran, as it mysteriously appeared, like a number station, during the Islamic holy month. It's rather fitting to release this on this date, because this month is indeed the month of Ramadan. Respect.

Folks, inject this into your iPod and enjoy!

(I've encoded this track with Ogg Vorbis- because ogg, imho, is the most OS friendly pro-compressed format )

The Voice of Energy.ogg

Description:

This track is called "The Voice of Energy" (yep- Kraftwerk check here ;) ). The track was originally released as a very limited edition 7" single on Static Caravan records (http://www.staticcaravan.org/) about 8 years ago. Almost all the so

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